Tuesday, December 31, 2013

After a 20 days delay
the Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV) has finally reported the inflation index
for November (4.8%), and a prediction for December (2.2%).

The numbers are far
from President Maduro’s prediction of a deflation of 5%, but the BCV did feel compelled
to explain in its report that the “economic dynamics” of the last months
have been influenced by a “economic war and a government’s counteroffensive.”

This is the BCV
version of the economic war theory as expressed in the first three paragraphs
of its report:

Dynamics of price
formation in the political and economic juncture of 2013: economic war and government’s
counter offensive.

During 2012 the
economic situation was characterized by high growth, moderate inflation, and
low scarcity levels, which allowed for the celebration of the presidential elections
in a stable juncture. However in October 2012 some of the central variables of
the Venezuelan economy began to suffer alterations: one of the most noticeable of
these alterations was the irrational rise in prices and the speculative extra-official
value of the dollar, which lead to a series of consequences for the national
economy during the year 2013.

The most serious of
these alterations, noticeable since the last quarter of 2012, were registered
by price and scarcity indicators, which remained during 2013 at unusually
[high] levels. The sickness and passing of our leader, Comandante Hugo Rafael
Chávez Frías, was taken advantage of by certain sectors of the political opposition
and some business owners in order to artificially affect the deterioration of
some economic variables.

As has become usual
in Venezuela’s history, political tensions and economic destabilization were
combined in the form of an authentic economic war against the Venezuelan
people, with significant impacts in the prices of the main good and services of
most consumption.

The report goes on to
explain the “relation” between moments of political tension in recent
Venezuelan history and how those moments have “been used” to wage an economic
war against the country. It also praises President Maduro for the “extraordinary”
measures he took during November 2013 against speculation and argues, without
explaining the methodology behind this assertion, that inflation would have
reached 6% in November, instead of 4.8%, if it were not for the “economic
counter offensive” of the Venezuelan government.

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Yesterday’s promotion
ceremony of military officers at Fuerte Tiuna included the promotion of the
President of the National Assembly Diosdado Cabello to the rank of Captain, among
others, for their participations in the military coups of February 4 and
November 27, 1992 (called “civic-military rebellions” in the official government
jargon.)

According
to AVN, Maduro congratulated the promoted officers and declared: “2013 was
the year that unity and revolutionary morality defeated the attempts by the
North American Empire and its allies of the Venezuelan right to divide the
National Bolivarian Armed Forces and destabilize the country.”

He added that his offensive
against the “economic war” will continue into 2014, but will now include a “new
and more powerful civic-military offensive.”

Image of the "Civic-military Hight Command of the Revolution" taken from the web page of the Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias

Sunday, December 22, 2013

In August this year Interior
and Justice Minister Rodriguez Torres announced that two Colombian
nationals had been arrested near Caracas. According to Rodriguez Torres the two
were the last link of an elaborate plot by the Venezuelan “right”, Venezuelan
exiles in Miami, Colombian ex-President Uribe Vélez, and Roger Noriega, to assassinate
Nicolas Maduro and Diosdado Cabello. Rodriguez Torres informed that the arrest
had been made with the collaboration of Colombian police services and that more
detentions would be made in Colombian territory.

This last week a new
arrest related to the case was in fact made in Colombia. Alejandro “Scooby”
Salcedo was detained in Antioquia charged with being the accomplice of the two
men arrested in Venezuela in August. However, according
to the chief of Bogota´s Metropolitan Police, Édgar Sánchez, Slacedo has confessed
that group planned to travel to Venezuela in order to steal from a wealthy unidentified
family of money lenders, and not to commit “magnicidio” against Maduro or
Cabello as the Venezuelan authorities have repeatedly claimed.

Friday, December 20, 2013

President Maduro
declared yesterday that next year he will “dismantle” the economic war that, according
to Venezuela´s public media, “sectors of the right are waging against the
Venezuelan People.”

“2014 will be the
year we dismantle at its roots all this economic attack against the country. (…)
We must continue balancing our economy against the speculative attacks and
prepare for a good 2014 of work and growth,” said Maduro.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

According to
President Maduro the power outage that affected most of Venezuela in early December
was a sabotage act by the opposition.

Yesterday, during the
ceremonies commemorating the 183 anniversary of the death of Bolívar,
Maduro
declared that “days before the [December 8] elections [the opposition] took
down a transmission line. It has all been proven. With a single shot they blow
up a key line and left the country without electricity.”

According to El
Universal, Justice and Interior Minister Miguel Rodríguez had already
last week proposed the idea that a sniper could be behind the blackout: “I have
been thinking on hypothesis: a single shot. A shot fired from 50 meters away by a
good sniper, at a cable that is 3 centimeters thick, it’s very easy. It was a
clean cut.”